Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

blog.frankel.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 104 posts

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#21

Post by ZekeSulastin »

audunw wrote: post #8
philjohn wrote: post #2

If you're going down the HomeAssistant route I'd recommend ditching any proprietary hubs and getting a Zigbee dongle instead, I've been using the Sonoff Zigbee dongle and even though it's connected to the server, in a rack, in the garage (so thick breezeblock walls between it and the rest of the house) there are enough always on mesh nodes in the lights themselves that the network is steady. Granted, the Dongle itsel…

You can use IKEA trådfri with Philips Hue. It’s a bit annoying to pair but once that’s done it just works, at least it has for me.

I have some random Amazon Zigbee bulbs connected to my Hue Bridge; the only annoying thing is that, while they show up in the Hue app, Hue doesn't expose them to Homekit like it does its native bulbs. At least Homebridge will get them to show up.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#22

Post by JKCalhoun »

I went through our house and installed motion controlled light switches in a few key places. Specifically places like a walk-in closet, the pantry, the utility room, the storage room under the staircase.

There was, I believe, no need to leave the light on when there is no motion.

(I hesitated on adding a motion-activated light to the bathroom because, for example, taking a shower might cause it to time-out and you would be showering in the dark.)

In any event I did not use any kind of networked device — just your standard $15 Lutron motion sensor light switch you can get from Lowe's or Home Despot.

I mention what is probably obvious because a use case in the article was to activate a light when it senses motion. No need to over engineer that.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#23

Post by Cyph0n »

perching_aix wrote: post #18
15155 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are Lutron Caseta or RadioRA any different than a locally-hosted Home Assistant installation with an attached Z-Wave or Zigbee radio? Why is "work[s] totally independently of Home Assistant" a desirable property? https://www.zwaveoutlet.com/pages/z-wave-associations https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/application-notes/AP...

Q: > Why is "work[s] totally independently of Home Assistant" a desirable property? A: > the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM could make it so I can't turn my lights on and off feels like a bit too much. Caseta doesn't use an open protocol, but it does allow all your switches, remotes, lights, etc, to work totally independently of HomeAssistant or Internet/WiFi

Run Home Assistant OS in a VM and snapshot it on a schedule.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#24

Post by ramses0 »

Cyph0n wrote: post #23
perching_aix wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Q: > Why is "work[s] totally independently of Home Assistant" a desirable property? A: > the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM could make it so I can't turn my lights on and off feels like a bit too much. Caseta doesn't use an open protocol, but it does allow all your switches, remotes, lights, etc, to work totally independently of HomeAssistant or Internet/WiFi

Run Home Assistant OS in a VM and snapshot it on a schedule.

aka: pretty much how the HA hardware devices (yellow/amber/green/blue) work by default.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#25

Post by andrewinardeer »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

I went through our house and installed motion controlled light switches in a few key places. Specifically places like a walk-in closet, the pantry, the utility room, the storage room under the staircase. There was, I believe, no need to leave the light on when there is no motion. (I hesitated on adding a motion-activated light to the bathroom because, for example, taking a shower might cause it to time-out and you wo…

I replaced motion sensors with human presence sensors which solved the shower timeout issue.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#26

Post by cyberax »

rainsford wrote: post #13
stavros wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is OK, but Zigbee is better. It runs offline, the devices can't access the internet so no data issues, and it's a standard protocol that's trivial to interface with over the MQTT bridge.

My (maybe incorrect) understanding is that Zigbee devices can't independently pair with each other, so if you want a particular switch to control a particular light you still need some sort of controller to be operating even if it's on your own local network. This is better than requiring Internet access, but a notable reliability downgrade from normal light switches unless your controller is 100% bulletproof.

> My (maybe incorrect) understanding is that Zigbee devices can't independently pair with each other

They can! You can bind clusters from several devices together, I have a couple of such devices. For example, you can bind a two wall light switches together.

The problem is that the UI for it is typically hidden and/or absent.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#27

Post by ramses0 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

I went through our house and installed motion controlled light switches in a few key places. Specifically places like a walk-in closet, the pantry, the utility room, the storage room under the staircase. There was, I believe, no need to leave the light on when there is no motion. (I hesitated on adding a motion-activated light to the bathroom because, for example, taking a shower might cause it to time-out and you wo…

There's a few others: humidity sensor switches (bathroom/laundry fans), and the "auto-timer-off" button light switches (for the front entryway/exterior lights).

_back_ that with an additional "Shelly" dongle (wifi control that is installed _behind_ the switch-plate), and you get both direct switch control, as well as direct WiFi control.

AFAIK the switch will override on/off when you hit it from the wall, and the WiFi will override whatever the current switch setting is. You never lose control from the wall-plate, and only gain control via WiFi.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#28

Post by rootusrootus »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #25
JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

I went through our house and installed motion controlled light switches in a few key places. Specifically places like a walk-in closet, the pantry, the utility room, the storage room under the staircase. There was, I believe, no need to leave the light on when there is no motion. (I hesitated on adding a motion-activated light to the bathroom because, for example, taking a shower might cause it to time-out and you wo…

I replaced motion sensors with human presence sensors which solved the shower timeout issue.

Which presence sensor are you using? One of the mmWave devices?

I've had an Aqara FP2 for a while but haven't really found a killer use for it. Maybe the bathroom is that case.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#29

Post by Rotareti »

mastax wrote: post #15
rainsford wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zigbee is good, but for lights or anything else you really want to always work, I'd recommend going with something that also works independently of HomeAssistant and Internet access even if you then need a proprietary hub to integrate with HomeAssistant. Lutron's Caseta system is what I went with. I've found HomeAssistant with Zigbee to be extremely reliable, but the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM…

With zigbee you can “bind” devices together, so that their interactions work without needing the hub to intervene. I bound my IKEA buttons to my IKEA lights with my homeassistant controller (with some difficulty) so that even when the controller is offline the buttons will still work.

I think it's called 'direct binding.' All of my lights are directly bound to my switches, so they work even without the server or Zigbee coordinator running. With some switches, you can even bind light scenes directly to the buttons. For example, you can bind the four buttons of a Philips Hue Tap Dial to different light scenes using Zigbee2MQTT.

Some switches don't allow direct binding, though. All of the Hue switches I tried support it, but some Tuya switches don't. On the other hand, all lights from different manufacturers which I tried were able to bind directly.

The first year I had to fiddle a lot with the tooling. The uptime of HA/zigbee2mqtt wasn't great. It was good to have this as a fall back.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#30

Post by 15155 »

perching_aix wrote: post #18
15155 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are Lutron Caseta or RadioRA any different than a locally-hosted Home Assistant installation with an attached Z-Wave or Zigbee radio? Why is "work[s] totally independently of Home Assistant" a desirable property? https://www.zwaveoutlet.com/pages/z-wave-associations https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/application-notes/AP...

Q: > Why is "work[s] totally independently of Home Assistant" a desirable property? A: > the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM could make it so I can't turn my lights on and off feels like a bit too much. Caseta doesn't use an open protocol, but it does allow all your switches, remotes, lights, etc, to work totally independently of HomeAssistant or Internet/WiFi

Z-Wave has this.

Also: how hard is it to back up 6 YAML files and a small config directory?

Post reply on HN